


the rebellion of particulars

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [226]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Amras is Anger, Caranthir is Depression, Celegorm thinks he's Acceptance, Curufin is Denial, Dysfunctional Family, Except it's five boys, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Grief, Interlude, Maglor is Barganining, by a few hours, set before the Fingolfin tent fic, title from a poem by Robin Blaser
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23781583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Caranthir had put thought—real, careful, pressure-on-a-wound thought—into how they would carry Maedhros back with them.That thought yielded nothing but empty hands.
Relationships: Maedhros | Maitimo & Sons of Fëanor
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [226]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	the rebellion of particulars

The walk across the steel spine of the bridge is the second longest that Caranthir has ever known. Another bridge holds pride (or shame) of place.

He had six brothers then, and a father.

In his heart he still had a mother too, though by the next morning, he knew that she was gone.

Mithrim is ugly under the noon sun. It is practical, square, ruthless. There is fire at its heart, and hidden at its farthest reaches. There is a body down in the field, but given the lay of the land, Maedhros is nearer.

Caranthir had put thought—real, careful, pressure-on-a-wound thought—into how they would carry Maedhros back with them.

That thought yielded nothing but empty hands.

_Hands._

He shudders. Celegorm told them, when he gathered them in Rumil’s study an hour ago, what had been done to Maedhros’ right hand.

Celegorm told them that, which was more than he had said for Amrod. Caranthir wonders if they will ever know, what Celegorm saw.

Amrod—Amrod— _Amras_.

Amras is still trembling like a leaf. With fear? No—with rage.

“We should not have _left_ him there,” he snaps. “I brought you—I brought _all_ of you, so that you could—so that you could _do_ something, damn you! Do you hear me, Maglor? _Damn you to hell_!”

“Blame Celegorm,” Maglor retorts, wheeling round. His hair—lank for lack of bathing—whips against his cheek. “If he had come, we could have done it. We hadn’t enough _force_.”

Caranthir wonders how Maglor can pretend to have authority, while invoking a younger brother’s name.

He wonders if Maedhros could hear them.

It is the barest hope.

Inside the walls of Mithrim, the midday meal is being shared at the long table. Caranthir has grown used to the faces that populate dead Rumil’s stronghold, mingling with those that remain of Athair’s (Maglor’s?) men. After Ulfang’s body was flung outside the gates, those who were close to him kept their heads low, but, in the hollow left by one less life, others have lifted their heads.

Watching, always watching. Opportunists. Schemers.

Thieves, though Caranthir is not yet certain what they mean to steal.

He trusts not a one.

They do not find Celegorm, there in the stone-floored, stone-walled hall. Curufin is not at the table either. On the other side of the water, he fled.

 _Maitimo_ , he said. The name he never spoke. The name he never chose.

Did it choose him, in that moment?

Could a name move the powers of life and death, love and sorrow?

Caranthir believed so much in that moment, in that awful light of truth, that his heart felt fit to burst.

Now, with his heart still beating, he can feel death on all of them; can feel it in his fingers. It has been so ever since he saw Maedhros— _Maitimo_ —horribly thin and horribly scarred. There were bruises on his cheeks, around his eyes, and along his nose and jaw. More purple than pale, his face, but milk-white where it _was_ pale. His hair was all wrong, both in length and color. His arms were bandaged to the wrist.

For the right, the wrist was all that was.

That is death, to Caranthir, even though he saw his father die.

Celegorm and Curufin are in the room they claim as their own, the one that used to be Athair’s. Celegorm has not removed his coat. Huan stands beside him, looking out the window.

Curufin is leaning against the wall.

If they were speaking, they have fallen silent now. Or maybe they can join their minds together, and speak without words.

“Where is he?” Curufin demands. Maglor stiffens, and Curufin’s lips twist. Another kind of death. “Of course, you were not bold enough to fetch him back.”

“You _ran_ ,” Caranthir points out, but Curufin ignores him.

“Well?” Amras spits. “Blame Celegorm, shall we?”

Celegorm turns his head. He is silent.

“Blame Celegorm?” Curufin demands. He is milk-white. His hands are clenched tightly on the opposite elbows. Curufin’s fingers are very clever, and always conscious.

They must have been shaking.

Amras mutters, “It’s what Maglor said we should do.”

“I didn’t mean it like _that_ ,” Maglor says, with tears in his voice. “I meant that—that now we’ve _seen_ him, but as a house divided. Do you think they—they don’t expect us to—”

“To crumble and fall?” Curufin asks, acidly. “I daresay they do. It doesn’t matter.” He _does_ meet Carnathir’s gaze now, and he sneers.

The bridges that exist between them—between Caranthir and Curufin (if one does), and between Caranthir and Maedhros, and between Caranthir and all the rest—are only wide enough for one man to cross at a time.

Someone must stand aside, in acceptance.

In trust.

Still, Celegorm says nothing. Huan sits back on his haunches.

Maglor twists his hands in his hair. The tears are not just in his voice, now. They are starting down his cheeks.

The bridge and the lake, those tears.

Caranthir is nothing but weeping, in his heart, but because he is blunt and plain and clumsy, the grief stays under his skin.

At least the door is shut. At least the watching faces are bent over bread and meat.

“ _Speak_ , Celegorm!” Maglor cries. “You were glad enough to tell us, today, how they—how they _mutilated_ him. You bore news but not arms! You—”

Celegorm, like Caranthir, does not much resemble Athair or Mother. He is cast in a mold all his own.

And yet, he and Caranthir share nothing.

“What,” Celegorm demands, hoarse and dangerous, “Would you have me say?”

It is not an offer.

It spurs Maglor on.

“You are unfeeling,” Maglor says. “If you had been there—if you had only _been_ there, we could have used you—your force. And now we would have him with us! We would be the ones to save him, not _them_. Not _Fingon_.”

His words are larger than themselves, somehow, like one of his old songs. They fill the room, where Athair’s ghost barely lingers—because this was not where Athair’s soul made itself at home.

(Will Maglor ever sing again? Caranthir used to think, _only if Maedhros returns_ , but now he does not know.

He did not have enough time, there in the dreadful tent, to see how much of Maedhros was really Maedhros.)

(How much of Maitimo—)

“Careful, Maglor,” Curufin murmurs. “You will goad him to violence.”

“No matter,” Celegorm says, and he smiles.

It looks like death.


End file.
